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Overview

On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born, the third child of a wealthy English banker and his wife. Sadly, she dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in any number of ways. Clearly history (and Kate Atkinson) have plans for her: In Ursula rests nothing less than the fate of civilization.

Wildly inventive, darkly comic, startlingly poignant -- this is Kate Atkinson at her absolute best, playing with time and history, telling a story that is breathtaking for both its audacity and its endless satisfactions.

Product Details

About the Author

Kate Atkinson won the Whitbread Book of the Year award for her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, and has been an internationally bestselling author ever since. Her most recent books include Case Histories, One Good Turn,When Will There Be Good News?, and Started Early, Took My Dog. Atkinson lives in Edinburgh.

Read an Excerpt

Life After Life

A Novel

By Kate Atkinson

Little, Brown and Company

CHAPTER 1

Be Ye Men of Valor

November 1930

A fug of tobacco smoke and damp clammy air hit her as she entered the café. She had come in from the rain and drops of water still trembled like delicate dew on the fur coats of some of the women inside. A regiment of white-aproned waiters rushed around at tempo, serving the needs of the Münchner at leisure—coffee, cake and gossip.

He was at a table at the far end of the room, surrounded by the usual cohorts and toadies. There was a woman she had never seen before—a permed, platinum blonde with heavy makeup—an actress by the look of her. The blond lit a cigarette, making a phallic performance out of it. Everyone knew that he preferred his women demure and whole-some, Bavarian preferably. All those dirndls and knee-socks, God help us.

The table was laden. Bienenstich, Gugelhupf, Käsekuchen. He was eating a slice of Kirschtorte. He loved his cakes. No wonder he looked so pasty, she was surprised he wasn't diabetic. The softly repellent body (she imagined pastry) beneath the clothes, never exposed for public view. Not a manly man. He smiled when he caught sight of her and half rose, saying, "Guten Tag, gnädiges Fräulein," indicating the chair next to him. The bootlicker who was currently occupying it jumped up and moved away.

"Unsere Englische Freundin," he said to the blonde, who blew cigarette smoke out slowly and examined her without any interest before eventually saying, "Guten Tag." A Berliner.

She placed her handbag, heavy with its cargo, on the floor next to her chair and ordered Schokolade. He insisted that she try the Pflaumen Streusel.

"Es regnet," she said by way of conversation. "It's raining."

"Yes, it's raining," he said with a heavy accent. He laughed, pleased at his attempt. Everyone else at the table laughed as well. "Bravo," someone said. "Sehr gutes Englisch." He was in a good mood, tapping the back of his index finger against his lips with an amused smile as if he was listening to a tune in his head.

The Streusel was delicious.

"Entschuldigung," she murmured, reaching down into her bag and delving for a handkerchief. Lace corners, monogrammed with her initials, "UBT"—a birthday present from Pammy. She dabbed politely at the Streusel flakes on her lips and then bent down again to put the handkerchief back in her bag and retrieve the weighty object nesting there. Her father's old service revolver from the Great War, a Webley Mark V.

A move rehearsed a hundred times. One shot. Swiftness was all, yet there was a moment, a bubble suspended in time after she had drawn the gun and levelled it at his heart when everything seemed to stop.

"Führer," she said, breaking the spell. "Für Sie."

Around the table guns were jerked from holsters and pointed at her. One breath. One shot.

Ursula pulled the trigger.

Darkness fell.

Snow

11 February 1910

An icy rush of air, a freezing slipstream on the newly exposed skin. She is, with no warning, outside the inside and the familiar wet, tropical world has suddenly evaporated. Exposed to the elements. A prawn peeled, a nut shelled.

No breath. All the world come down to this. One breath.

Little lungs, like dragonfly wings failing to inflate in the foreign atmosphere. No wind in the strangled pipe. The buzzing of a thousand bees in the tiny curled pearl of an ear.

Panic. The drowning girl, the falling bird.

"Dr. Fellowes should have been here," Sylvie moaned. "Why isn't he here yet? Where is he?" Big dewdrop pearls of sweat on her skin, a horse nearing the end of a hard race. The bedroom fire stoked like a ship's furnace. The thick brocade curtains drawn tightly against the enemy, the night. The black bat.

"Yer man'll be stuck in the snow, I expect, ma'am. It's sure dreadful wild out there. The road will be closed."

Sylvie and Bridget were alone in their ordeal. Alice, the parlor maid, was visiting her sick mother. And Hugh, of course, was chasing down Isobel, his wild goose of a sister, à Paris. Sylvie had no wish to involve Mrs. Glover, snoring in her attic room like a truffling hog. Sylvie imagined she would conduct proceedings like a parade-ground sergeant-major. The baby was early. Sylvie was expecting it to be late like the others. The best-laid plans, and so on.

"Oh, ma'am," Bridget cried suddenly, "she's all blue, so she is."

"A girl?"

"The cord's wrapped around her neck. Oh, Mary, Mother of God. She's been strangled, the poor wee thing."

"Not breathing? Let me see her. We must do something. What can we do?"

"Yes, Mrs. Todd, a bonny, bouncing baby girl." Sylvie thought Dr. Fellowes might be over-egging the pudding with his alliteration. He was not one for bonhomie at the best of times. The health of his patients, particularly their exits and entrances, seemed designed to annoy him.

"She would have died from the cord around her neck. I arrived at Fox Corner in the nick of time. Literally." Dr. Fellowes held up his surgical scissors for Sylvie's admiration. They were small and neat and their sharp points curved upwards at the end. "Snip, snip," he said. Sylvie made a mental note, a small, vague one, given her exhaustion and the circumstances of it, to buy just such a pair of scissors, in case of similar emergency. (Unlikely, it was true.) Or a knife, a good sharp knife to be carried on one's person at all times, like the robber-girl in The Snow Queen.

"You were lucky I got here in time," Dr. Fellowes said. "Before the snow closed the roads. I called for Mrs. Haddock, the midwife, but I believe she is stuck somewhere outside Chalfont St. Peter."

"Mrs. Haddock?" Sylvie said and frowned. Bridget laughed out loud and then quickly mumbled, "Sorry, sorry, sir." Sylvie supposed that she and Bridget were both on the edge of hysteria. Hardly surprising.

"Bog Irish," Dr. Fellowes muttered.

"Bridget's only a scullery maid, a child herself. I am very grateful to her. It all happened so quickly." Sylvie thought how much she wanted to be alone, how she was never alone. "You must stay until morning, I suppose, doctor," she said reluctantly.

Sylvie sighed and suggested that he help himself to a glass of brandy in the kitchen. And perhaps some ham and pickles. "Bridget will see to you." She wanted rid of him. He had delivered all three (three!) of her children and she did not like him one bit. Only a husband should see what he saw. Pawing and poking with his instruments in her most delicate and secretive places. (But would she rather have a midwife called Mrs. Haddock deliver her child?) Doctors for women should all be women themselves. Little chance of that.

Dr. Fellowes lingered, humming and hawing, overseeing the washing and wrapping of the new arrival by a hot-faced Bridget. Bridget was the eldest of seven so she knew how to swaddle an infant. She was fourteen years old, ten years younger than Sylvie. When Sylvie was fourteen she was still in short skirts, in love with her pony, Tiffin. Had no idea where babies came from, even on her wedding night she remained baffled. Her mother, Lottie, had hinted but had fallen shy of anatomical exactitude. Conjugal relations between man and wife seemed, mysteriously, to involve larks soaring at daybreak. Lottie was a reserved woman. Some might have said narcoleptic. Her husband, Sylvie's father, Llewellyn Beresford, was a famous society artist but not at all Bohemian. No nudity or louche behavior in his household. He had painted Queen Alexandra, when she was still a princess. Said she was very pleasant.

They lived in a good house in Mayfair, while Tiffin was stabled in a mews near Hyde Park. In darker moments, Sylvie was wont to cheer herself up by imagining that she was back there in the sunny past, sitting neatly in her side-saddle on Tiffin's broad little back, trotting along Rotten Row on a clean spring morning, the blossom bright on the trees.

"How about some hot tea and a nice bit of buttered toast, Mrs. Todd?" Bridget said.

"That would be lovely, Bridget."

The baby, bandaged like a Pharaonic mummy, was finally passed to Sylvie. Softly, she stroked the peachy cheek and said, "Hello, little one," and Dr. Fellowes turned away so as not to be a witness to such syrupy demonstrations of affection. He would have all children brought up in a new Sparta if it were up to him.

Sylvie was woken by a dazzling sliver of sunlight piercing the curtains like a shining silver sword. She lay languidly in lace and cashmere as Mrs. Glover came into the room, proudly bearing a huge breakfast tray. Only an occasion of some importance seemed capable of drawing Mrs. Glover this far out of her lair. A single, half-frozen snowdrop drooped in the bud vase on the tray. "Oh, a snowdrop!" Sylvie said. "The first flower to raise its poor head above the ground. How brave it is!"

Mrs. Glover, who did not believe that flowers were capable of courage, or indeed any other character trait, laudable or otherwise, was a widow who had only been with them at Fox Corner a few weeks. Before her advent there had been a woman called Mary who slouched a great deal and burned the roasts. Mrs. Glover tended, if anything, to undercook food. In the prosperous household of Sylvie's childhood, Cook was called "Cook" but Mrs. Glover preferred "Mrs. Glover." It made her irreplaceable. Sylvie still stubbornly thought of her as Cook.

"Mm," Sylvie said, reluctant to argue with such strongly held views. She was surprised that Dr. Fellowes had left without examining either herself or the baby.

"He looked in on you. You were asleep," Mrs. Glover said. Sylvie sometimes wondered if Mrs. Glover was a mind-reader. A perfectly horrible thought.

"He ate his breakfast first," Mrs. Glover said, displaying both approval and disapproval in the same breath. "The man has an appetite, that's for sure."

"I could eat a horse," Sylvie laughed. She couldn't, of course. Tiffin popped briefly into her mind. She picked up the silver cutlery, heavy like weapons, ready to tackle Mrs. Glover's devilled kidneys. "Lovely," she said (were they?) but Mrs. Glover was already busy inspecting the baby in the cradle. ("Plump as a suckling pig.") Sylvie idly wondered if Mrs. Haddock was still stuck somewhere outside Chalfont St. Peter.

"I hear the baby nearly died," Mrs. Glover said.

"Well ..." Sylvie said. Such a fine line between living and dying. Her own father, the society portraitist, slipped on an Isfahan rug on a first-floor landing after some fine cognac one evening. The next morning he was discovered dead at the foot of the stairs. No one had heard him fall or cry out. He had just begun a portrait of the Earl of Balfour. Never finished. Obviously.

Afterward it turned out that he had been more profligate with his money than mother and daughter realized. A secret gambler, markers all over town. He had made no provision at all for unexpected death and soon there were creditors crawling over the nice house in Mayfair. A house of cards as it turned out. Tiffin had to go. Broke Sylvie's heart, the grief greater than any she felt for her father.

"I thought his only vice was women," her mother said, roosting temporarily on a packing case as if modeling for a pietà.

They sank into genteel and well-mannered poverty. Sylvie's mother grew pale and uninteresting, larks soared no more for her as she faded, consumed by consumption. Seventeen-year-old Sylvie was rescued from becoming an artist's model by a man she met at the post-office counter. Hugh. A rising star in the prosperous world of banking. The epitome of bourgeois respectability. What more could a beautiful but penniless girl hope for?

Lottie died with less fuss than was expected and Hugh and Sylvie married quietly on Sylvie's eighteenth birthday. ("There," Hugh said, "now you will never forget the anniversary of our marriage.") They spent their honeymoon in France, a delightful quinzaine in Deauville before settling in semi-rural bliss near Beaconsfield in a house that was vaguely Lutyens in style. It had everything one could ask for—a large kitchen, a drawing room with French windows on to the lawn, a pretty morning room and several bedrooms waiting to be filled with children. There was even a little room at the back of the house for Hugh to use as a study. "Ah, my growlery," he laughed.

It was surrounded at a discreet distance by similar houses. There was a meadow and a copse and a bluebell wood beyond with a stream running through it. The train station, no more than a halt, would allow Hugh to be at his banker's desk in less than an hour.

"Sleepy hollow," Hugh laughed as he gallantly carried Sylvie across the threshold. It was a relatively modest dwelling (nothing like Mayfair) but nonetheless a little beyond their means, a fiscal recklessness that surprised them both.

"We should give the house a name," Hugh said. "The Laurels, the Pines, the Elms."

"But we have none of those in the garden," Sylvie pointed out. They were standing at the French windows of the newly purchased house, looking at a swathe of overgrown lawn. "We must get a gardener," Hugh said. The house itself was echoingly empty. They had not yet begun to fill it with the Voysey rugs and Morris fabrics and all the other aesthetic comforts of a twentieth-century house. Sylvie would have quite happily lived in Liberty's rather than the as- yet-to-be-named marital home.

The previous owner of their unnamed house had sold up and gone to live in Italy. "Imagine," Sylvie said dreamily. She had been to Italy when she was younger, a grand tour with her father while her mother went to Eastbourne for her lungs.

"Full of Italians," Hugh said dismissively.

"Quite. That's rather the attraction," Sylvie said, unwinding herself from his arm.

"The Gables, the Homestead?"

"Do stop," Sylvie said.

A fox appeared out of the shrubbery and crossed the lawn. "Oh, look," Sylvie said. "How tame it seems, it must have grown used to the house being unoccupied."

"Let's hope the local hunt isn't following on its heels," Hugh said. "It's a scrawny beast."

"It's a vixen. She's a nursing mother, you can see her teats."

Hugh blinked at such blunt terminology falling from the lips of his recently virginal bride. (One presumed. One hoped.)

"Look," Sylvie whispered. Two small cubs sprang out onto the grass and tumbled over each other in play. "Oh, they're such handsome little creatures!"

"Some might say vermin."

"Perhaps they see us as verminous," Sylvie said. "Fox Corner—that's what we should call the house. No one else has a house with that name and shouldn't that be the point?" (Continues...)

Reading Group Guide

1. Ursula Todd gets to live out many different realities, something that's impossible in real life. Though there is an array of possibilities that form Ursula's alternate histories, do you think any and all futures are possible in Ursula's world, or are there certain parameters within which each life is lived?2. As time goes on, Ursula learns more about her ability to restart her lifeand she often changes course accordingly, but she doesn't always correct things. Why not? Do you think Ursula ever becomes completely conscious of her ability to relive and redo her lives? If so, at what point in the story do you think that happens? And what purpose do you think she sets for herself once she figures it out?3. Do people's choices have the power to change destiny? How do you think Ursula's choices are either at odds with or in line with the ideas of fate and destiny throughout the story?4. Do you think Ursula's ability to relive her life over and over is a gift or a curse? How do you think Ursula looks at it? Do you think she is able to embrace the philosophy amor fati ("love of fate," "acceptance") in the end?5. Small moments often have huge ramifications in Ursula's life. Do you think certain moments are more crucial than others in the way Ursula's life develops? Why, and which moments?6. LIFE AFTER LIFE encapsulates both the big picture (the sweep of major global historical events) and the small picture (the dynamics of Ursula's loving, quirky family). How are these pictures tied together? When do Ursula's decisions affect the big picture more, or the small picture more? When do they affect both?7. How does Atkinson portray gender throughout the story? How does she comment on the gender roles of this time period, and which characters challenge those rolesand how?8. How does Atkinson's humor pepper the story? In what ways is she able to bring a bit of comedy to her characters and their stories as relief from the serious and dark subject matter?9. How do the various relationships within the Todd family shape the story? What is the significance of maternal bonds and sibling bonds in the story?10. How does Atkinson capture the terror and tragedy of the Blitz? How does war become its own character in the book? What type of commentary does Atkinson make on the English approach to war? Why do you think Atkinson portrayed one of Ursula's lives in Germany, experiencing war and the bombing from the opposing side?11. On page 379, Ursula faces a bleak end in Germany with her daughter, Frieda. She chooses death over life for the first time, saying, "Something had cracked and broken and the order of things had changed." What do you think she means by that? Is this a significant turning point to Ursula's story? Do you think the end of this life affects her decisions in other lives that follow?12. On page 354, Klara says, "Hindsight's a wonderful thing. If we all had it there would be no history to write about." Do you think this is true? In what ways does the use of hindsight come to pass in the book?13. "'Well, we all get on,' Sylvie said, 'one way or another. And in the end we all arrive at the same place. I hardly see that it matters how we get there.' It seemed to Ursula that how you got there was the whole point..." (page 252). Do you agree with Sylvie or with Ursula? How does this relate to a philosophy raised by Dr. Kelletthat "sometimes a bad thing happens to prevent a worse thing happening" (page 160)?14. Along similar lines, Ursula says to Teddy on page 446, "You just have to get on with life....We only have one after all, we should try and do our best. We can never get it right, but we must try." And Teddy responds, "What if we had a chance to do it again and again until we finally did get it right?" What do you think it means to get things right? Is Ursula attempting to make things "right" in life each time she's reborn? If so, which things in particularand how?15. On page 277, Ralph asks Ursula if she could have killed Hitler as a baby, and Ursula thinks, "If I thought it would save Teddy.... Not just Teddy, of course, the rest of the world, too." Do you think Ursula ultimately had to choose between saving Teddy and saving "the rest of the world"? If so, why did she choose as she did? And was she able to save either?16. Life continues to restart over and over for Ursula and the Todd family, and outcomes vary greatly each time. What happens to the characters changes drastically in many of the versions. Do you feel the characters change just as drastically, in terms of who they are and what they are like? Or do you think they fundamentally stay the same? Ursula learns many things about life and its progression, but does she herself change over the course of the book?17. What are the biggest questions this book raised for you? How did it change the way you think about the course of your own life?

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Life after Life

Editorial Reviews

In the first pages after the prologue of this novel, Ursula Todd is born and dies almost immediately; but in this singular fiction, that is only the beginning of her story. Thereafter she is repeatedly reborn, lives, and dies, each time surrounded by the same family. As the story progresses, so does its protagonist, assimilating lessons that she has learned along the way. Kate Atkinson's Life After Life is no contrived séance room saga of reincarnation; it is a sage tale of living through historic hard times and gaining wisdom along the way. Superlative hardcover reviews; now in trade paperback and NOOK Book.

Life after life after life: Atkinson's telling title suggests not some glorious afterworld but the structure of this remarkable novel, about an English girl born in February, 1910. In fact, Ursula is stillborn in an opening chapter but emerges a lusty babe in the next; Whitbread Award winner Atkinson (Behind the Scenes at the Museum) then hopscotches through time, circling back to offer alternate versions of Ursula's life. Did Ursula endure an unwanted pregnancy, see her brother die of influenza, enter into a sour marriage—or not? Did she survive World War II Britain or instead marry a German and face down Hitler, a gun in her hand? One brief passage shows Ursula musing with a doctor about her fugue states, but Atkinson doesn't waste time belaboring the idea, instead delivering a clear understanding that one life can take different avenues—and what a difference that can make. Atkinson works both large and small, capturing the sweep of history while perfectly rendering the dynamics of Ursula's loving, contentious family: gentle father Hugh, disappointed mother Sylvie, generous sister Pamela, and more. VERDICT Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 10/28/12 and Editors' Picks, LJ 2/15/13, "Editors' Spring Picks."]—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Library Journal

One of the things I like most about British mystery novels (including Kate Atkinson's) is the combination of good writing and a certain theatrical bravado. Their authors enjoy showing us how expertly they can construct a puzzle, then solve it: the literary equivalent of pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Life After Life inspires a similar sort of admiration, as Atkinson sharpens our awareness of the apparently limitless choices and decisions that a novelist must make on every page, and of what is gained and lost when the consequences of these choices are, like life, singular and final.

"Life After Life is a masterpiece about how even the smallest choices can sometimes change the course of history. It's wise, bittersweet, funny, and unlike anything else you've ever read. Kate Atkinson is one of my all-time favorite novelists, and I believe this is her best book yet."

J. Courtney Sullivan

"Life After Life is dark and funny and suspenseful and sad all at the same time."

Emily Ecton

"Kate Atkinson is a marvel. There aren't enough breathless adjectives to describe Life After Life: Dazzling, witty, moving, joyful, mournful, profound. Wildly inventive, deeply felt. Hilarious. Humane. Simply put: It's one of the best novels I've read this century."-Gillian Flynn, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Gone Girl

"Life After Life is a masterpiece about how even the smallest choices can sometimes change the course of history. It's wise, bittersweet, funny, and unlike anything else you've ever read. Kate Atkinson is one of my all-time favorite novelists, and I believe this is her best book yet."-J. Courtney Sullivan, bestselling author of Maine and Commencement

"Kate Atkinson's new novel is a box of delights. Ingenious in construction, indefatigably entertaining, it grips the reader's imagination on the first page and never lets go. If you wish to be moved and astonished, read it. And if you want to give a dazzling present, buy it for your friends."-Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies

"An audacious, ambitious book that challenges notions of time, fate and free will, not to mention narrative plausibility...[Atkinson's] writing is funny and quirky and sharp and sad - calamity laced with humor - and full of quietly heroic characters who offer knowing Lorrie Moore-esque parenthetical asides...Atkinson's true genius is structure...Each version is entirely and equally credible."-Sarah Lyall, New York Times

"An exercise in narrative gutsiness; a meditation on history, contingency, and free will; and the best new novel I've read this year."-Kathryn Schulz, New York Magazine

"[Atkinson's] latest novel, Life After Life, is her very best... A big book that defies logic, chronology and even history in ways that underscore its author's fully untethered imagination... Even without the sleight of hand, Life After Life would be an exceptionally captivating book with an engaging cast of characters... [Atkinson's] own writerly cradle was rocked by a very sure hand indeed."-Janet Maslin, New York Times

"Audacious, the kind of sweeping virtuoso epic that actually earns overheated book-jacket phrases like 'tour de force!'...Atkinson is a fantastic storyteller... It's all so richly imagined and ingeniously executed that the mystery feels right. Her domestic vignettes and wide-screen portraits of wartime resonate with startling physical and emotional clarity, and even her repetitions find fresh revelations... What Atkinson has mastered: shining a light on how full life is of choices and chance, and how lucky we are to live it."-Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

"The Blitz segments vibrate with life, as vivid and horrifying as a series of glimpses into a charnel house...The natural exuberance of Atkinson's prose is brought into sharp, precise control. Buried inside Life After Life is the best Blitz novel since Sarah Waters's The Night Watch."-Steve Donoghue, The Washington Post

"Fascinating... A tour de force that ponders memory and deja vu-and puts history on a very human scale."-Parade

"[Atkinson] is nothing if not clever...A fine writer...filling the pages with a liveliness and intelligence...Ursula's quest to 'get it right' gradually becomes less important than Atkinson's talent to create such an entertaining and suspenseful story that tells many versions of the history of the 20th century."-Bob Hoover, The Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Ambitious...[Atkinson] can be playful and profound, an enjoyable storyteller as well as an artful writer...She gives us a complete picture of an upper-class British family as it moves into the modern era, and in such a way that we are left sifting through the many turns a life can take and contemplating the consequences thereof."-Sherryl Connelly, New York Daily News

"Audacious and darkly mysterious...Atkinson is a master of structure...A sense of dread but also one of hope infuse the novel...Even the canniest reader can't predict what will happen next, so the long novel remains absorbing until its end. It lightly raises questions about the meaning of life and death and identify, fate and chance, and leaves them unanswered to echo in the reader's mind after the final page."-Margaret Quamme, Columbus Dispatch

"Life After Life is a hypnotic dance of causality and chance, in which Ursula makes genuine progress...[Life After Life] displays...trapeze-artist panache, releasing plotlines into the oblivion of one past life only to retrieve them, to the reader's appreciative gasps, in a later one...It's rich in the gravity and texture of reality... Marvelously vibrant...Atkinson makes every one of Ursula's lives, as well as the lives of those she touches, feel inestimably precious."-Laura Miller, Salon

"A densely layered, century-sprawling work that is a formidable bid for the brass ring of the U.K.'s prestigious Man Booker Prize. Life After Life is a drama of failures and providential rebirths...High-concept premise...A deft and convincing portrayal of an English family's evolution across two world wars...Marvelous...Not only does she bring characters to life with enviable ease, she has an almost offhand knack for vivid scene-setting ...Her storytelling prowess is on fullest display in a gorgeous and nerve-racking novella-length chapter set during the Blitz ... It's spellbindingly done."-Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

"Delightfully precocious and darkly moody... Revealing and straightforward... Originality is the jumping-off point for this especially unique novel, and readers looking for something fresh should take a chance. Readers already in love with Atkinson's novels, and equally besotted with Jackson Brodie, will be just as pleased with the life - the lives - of Ursula Todd."-Carol Memmott, USA Today

"Masterful...Atkinson not only invites readers in, she also asks them to give up their preconceptions of what a novel should be, and instead accept what a novel can be... What impresses me about this flip book of nonstop scenarios - in wartime and peacetime - is not only how absorbing they are, but how brave Atkinson is to have written them. After all, there really isn't much recent precedent for a major, serious yet playfully experimental novel with a female character at its center. Good for her to have given us one; we needed it...She opened her novel outward, letting it breathe unrestricted, all the while creating a strong, inviting draft of something that feels remarkably like life."-Meg Wolitzer, NPR.org

"Gripping and sophisticated...Enthralling...[Atkinson] deftly captures the cruel frailty of life with judicious compassion...No writer alive makes for better company on the page-knowing, funny, and prodigally inventive: Ursula is a magnificent creation, but dozens of finely drawn secondary characters (her bohemian Aunt Izzie alone would make this book worth reading) force her to fight for the spotlight on every page...Unflaggingly curious and unfailingly open-minded, Atkinson is like some great snoop, prowling among life's mysteries, turning the commonplace inside out...Literary and entertaining all at once, Atkinson is a sophisticated artist who also can keep you up well past bedtime, and that double-barreled talent is on display as never before in Life After Life. My first reaction upon finishing it was to imitate the unsinkable Ursula and begin all over again."-Malcolm Jones, The Daily Beast

"Atkinson has turned a high-concept conceit into an intricately crafted, totally engaging new novel...Atkinson combines the cleverness of metafiction with the warmth and detail of period fiction for an end result that is satisfyingly original."-Yvonne Zipp, Christian Science Monitor

"Atkinson has a knack for puzzle-making...creating a series of narrative fragments that cohere into a breathtaking whole...By the final chapters, it's clear that Ursula is gaining on something much bigger than any of her lives: a true calling. Watching that pursuit is frequently heartbreaking and entirely thrilling."-Katie Arnold-Ratliff, Time

"Inventive...This ingenious narrative conceit not only illustrates how seemingly small decisions can affect our lives, it also allows us as readers to inhabit a novelist's creative process...Atkinson has crafted a narrative that pushes us to think about our own choices... Some of Ursula's narratives are so compelling, so convincing, that it is hard to imagine her ending up any other way."-Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times

"Life After Life is dark and funny and suspenseful and sad all at the same time."-Emily Ecton, NPR (Great Reads of 2013)

"It is in the depiction of Ursula's loving yet contentious family that Life After Life truly shines...a dazzling, intricate and entertaining novel."-Michael Berry, San Francisco Chronicle

"A thoroughly entertaining, periodically moving read, and a wholly unique addition ... Atkinson never so much as flirts with pathos; her ethos and heroine are as unsentimental as the times require."-Eugenia Williamson, Boston Globe

"Sure to be one of the most talked-about books of the year. Life After Life is a dazzling juggling act...(by all means, read this book)."-Mary Ann Gwinn, Seattle Times

"You can't put down Life After Life until you finish it, and then I suggest you read it a second time."-Bob Hoover, Dallas Morning News

"Dazzling...the fantasy behind that reality turns out to be rivetingly complex."-Karen Holt, O, the Oprah Magazine

"I cannot recommend this book enough. It's nothing short of a genre-bending masterpiece - thoughtful and compelling, convoluted in plot but clear in resolve. If I had many lifetimes, I would make sure to read Life After Life in each."-Kevin Nguyen, Grantland

From the Publisher

"[Atkinson's] latest novel, Life After Life, is her very best... A big book that defies logic, chronology and even history in ways that underscore its author's fully untethered imagination... Even without the sleight of hand, Life After Life would be an exceptionally captivating book with an engaging cast of characters... [Atkinson's] own writerly cradle was rocked by a very sure hand indeed."

Janet Maslin

"Audacious, the kind of sweeping virtuoso epic that actually earns overheated book-jacket phrases like 'tour de force!'...Atkinson is a fantastic storyteller... It's all so richly imagined and ingeniously executed that the mystery feels right. Her domestic vignettes and wide-screen portraits of wartime resonate with startling physical and emotional clarity, and even her repetitions find fresh revelations... What Atkinson has mastered: shining a light on how full life is of choices and chance, and how lucky we are to live it."

Leah Greenblatt

"An audacious, ambitious book that challenges notions of time, fate and free will, not to mention narrative plausibility...[Atkinson's] writing is funny and quirky and sharp and sad - calamity laced with humor - and full of quietly heroic characters who offer knowing Lorrie Moore-esque parenthetical asides...Atkinson's true genius is structure...Each version is entirely and equally credible."

Sarah Lyall

"An exercise in narrative gutsiness; a meditation on history, contingency, and free will; and the best new novel I've read this year."

Kathryn Schulz

"You can't put down Life After Life until you finish it, and then I suggest you read it a second time."

Bob Hoover

"Ambitious...[Atkinson] can be playful and profound, an enjoyable storyteller as well as an artful writer...She gives us a complete picture of an upper-class British family as it moves into the modern era, and in such a way that we are left sifting through the many turns a life can take and contemplating the consequences thereof."

Sherryl Connelly

"The Blitz segments vibrate with life, as vivid and horrifying as a series of glimpses into a charnel house...The natural exuberance of Atkinson's prose is brought into sharp, precise control. Buried inside Life After Life is the best Blitz novel since Sarah Waters's The Night Watch."

Steve Donoghue

"Fascinating... A tour de force that ponders memory and déjà vu-and puts history on a very human scale."

Parade

"Kate Atkinson's new novel is a box of delights. Ingenious in construction, indefatigably entertaining, it grips the reader's imagination on the first page and never lets go. If you wish to be moved and astonished, read it. And if you want to give a dazzling present, buy it for your friends."

Hilary Mantel

"Audacious and darkly mysterious...Atkinson is a master of structure...A sense of dread but also one of hope infuse the novel...Even the canniest reader can't predict what will happen next, so the long novel remains absorbing until its end. It lightly raises questions about the meaning of life and death and identify, fate and chance, and leaves them unanswered to echo in the reader's mind after the final page."

Margaret Quamme

"Sure to be one of the most talked-about books of the year. Life After Life is a dazzling juggling act...(by all means, read this book)."

Mary Ann Gwinn

"Dazzling...the fantasy behind that reality turns out to be rivetingly complex."

Karen Holt

"It is in the depiction of Ursula's loving yet contentious family that Life After Life truly shines...a dazzling, intricate and entertaining novel."

Michael Berry

"A thoroughly entertaining, periodically moving read, and a wholly unique addition ... Atkinson never so much as flirts with pathos; her ethos and heroine are as unsentimental as the times require."

Eugenia Williamson

"I cannot recommend this book enough. It's nothing short of a genre-bending masterpiece - thoughtful and compelling, convoluted in plot but clear in resolve. If I had many lifetimes, I would make sure to read Life After Life in each."

Kevin Nguyen

"Delightfully precocious and darkly moody... Revealing and straightforward... Originality is the jumping-off point for this especially unique novel, and readers looking for something fresh should take a chance. Readers already in love with Atkinson's novels, and equally besotted with Jackson Brodie, will be just as pleased with the life - the lives - of Ursula Todd."

Carol Memmott

"Masterful...Atkinson not only invites readers in, she also asks them to give up their preconceptions of what a novel should be, and instead accept what a novel can be... What impresses me about this flip book of nonstop scenarios - in wartime and peacetime - is not only how absorbing they are, but how brave Atkinson is to have written them. After all, there really isn't much recent precedent for a major, serious yet playfully experimental novel with a female character at its center. Good for her to have given us one; we needed it...She opened her novel outward, letting it breathe unrestricted, all the while creating a strong, inviting draft of something that feels remarkably like life."

Meg Wolitzer

"Life After Life is a hypnotic dance of causality and chance, in which Ursula makes genuine progress...[Life After Life] displays...trapeze-artist panache, releasing plotlines into the oblivion of one past life only to retrieve them, to the reader's appreciative gasps, in a later one...It's rich in the gravity and texture of reality... Marvelously vibrant...Atkinson makes every one of Ursula's lives, as well as the lives of those she touches, feel inestimably precious."

Laura Miller

"A densely layered, century-sprawling work that is a formidable bid for the brass ring of the U.K.'s prestigious Man Booker Prize. Life After Life is a drama of failures and providential rebirths...High-concept premise...A deft and convincing portrayal of an English family's evolution across two world wars...Marvelous...Not only does she bring characters to life with enviable ease, she has an almost offhand knack for vivid scene-setting ...Her storytelling prowess is on fullest display in a gorgeous and nerve-racking novella-length chapter set during the Blitz ... It's spellbindingly done."

Sam Sacks

"Atkinson has a knack for puzzle-making...creating a series of narrative fragments that cohere into a breathtaking whole...By the final chapters, it's clear that Ursula is gaining on something much bigger than any of her lives: a true calling. Watching that pursuit is frequently heartbreaking and entirely thrilling."

Katie Arnold-Ratliff

"Inventive...This ingenious narrative conceit not only illustrates how seemingly small decisions can affect our lives, it also allows us as readers to inhabit a novelist's creative process...Atkinson has crafted a narrative that pushes us to think about our own choices... Some of Ursula's narratives are so compelling, so convincing, that it is hard to imagine her ending up any other way."

Carolyn Kellogg

"Gripping and sophisticated...Enthralling...[Atkinson] deftly captures the cruel frailty of life with judicious compassion...No writer alive makes for better company on the page-knowing, funny, and prodigally inventive: Ursula is a magnificent creation, but dozens of finely drawn secondary characters (her bohemian Aunt Izzie alone would make this book worth reading) force her to fight for the spotlight on every page...Unflaggingly curious and unfailingly open-minded, Atkinson is like some great snoop, prowling among life's mysteries, turning the commonplace inside out...Literary and entertaining all at once, Atkinson is a sophisticated artist who also can keep you up well past bedtime, and that double-barreled talent is on display as never before in Life After Life. My first reaction upon finishing it was to imitate the unsinkable Ursula and begin all over again."

Malcolm Jones

"Atkinson has turned a high-concept conceit into an intricately crafted, totally engaging new novel...Atkinson combines the cleverness of metafiction with the warmth and detail of period fiction for an end result that is satisfyingly original."

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

When I first read the synopsis of Kate Atkinson's Life After Life, I immediately wondered how Ursula Todd would come back to life. Would it be like Captain Jack Harkness in the television series Torchwood, where moments after death she'd revive with a huge gasp for air? Would it be more like the movie Groundhog Day, with all the frustration that came with not being able to escape the loop? Would she be aware of what was happening? Would other people be aware of it happening to her? No matter how many possibilities I envisioned, I was still surprised by the way Kate Atkinson crafted this plot point. It is handled with ingenuity and originality; never cheesy, never trite. I'm purposely being vague here, because I don't want to spoil it for anyone. But I think every time I feel d&eacute;j&agrave; vu in the future, I'll be reminded of this novel...
Much of the story took place in London during the bombings (the &quot;Blitz&quot;) of WWII. These pages were terrifying and heart-wrenching. I would start to feel overwhelmed and think, &quot;Is this ever going to stop?&quot; I'd want to put the book down for a while, and then feel guilty. I'd been reading over the course of only two days, and could take a break whenever I wanted. London had 57 nights in a row of bombings. Atkinson gives readers an incredibly vivid portrayal of war, a poignant and multifaceted look at its enormity and how distressing - and wearying - it is for all involved.
Life After Life is beautifully written and reads like a classic. Wonderfully complex, it's a story you could read over and over and always make new connections.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive any other compensation for this review.

Shudro

More than 1 year ago

I received an ARC of Kate Atkinson's latest book and was not disappointed! Kate wields Ursula's life and her various possibilities like a kaleidoscope; with one simple twist the results are so beautifully different and complex.
From the publisher, &quot;On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born, the third child of a wealthy English banker and his wife. Sadly, she dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in any number of ways. Clearly history (and Kate Atkinson) have plans for her: In Ursula rests nothing less than the fate of civilization.&quot;
Facing the unknown, reincarnation and ownership for our actions or passivity is a fascinating backdrop to this wildly powerful tale that courses through different time periods in England and Europe's 20th century. It was so easy to be caught up in Ursula's many lives; I got the same rush of excitement and anticipation as I did when reading the &quot;Choose Your Own Adventure&rdquo; book series in the 80&rsquo;s as a young girl! I highly recommend &ldquo;Life After Life&rdquo;, as it was thoroughly engaging and engrossing &ndash; which is the marking of a phenomenal book!

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

This was a selection for our book club, and I have to say it isn't one I would have picked myself, nor would I read it again. The premise is very intriguing and the history and writing are well done. The explanation of the "deja vu" and how Ursula moves past a previous obstacle each time she starts over were very well done. However, about halfway through, the story just became mundane, and while a lot of it lended to the history of the time period Ursula lived in, I felt that the more important parts of the plot were lost in boring daily detail. It also became a little jumbled at the end, and i'm not quite sure i really understand what happened or why it happened in the end after all. If you just want ot give something different a try, a chance to read outside the box, give it a shot. But dont expect a riveting story.

TheReadingWriter

More than 1 year ago

&ldquo;There is a fine line between living and dying,&rdquo; a character observes in Kate Atkinson&rsquo;s new novel. And it does certainly seem to be the case here, in the midst of two world wars, during the Great Influenza, at the beginning of the twentieth century in Britain. Characters come close to death, and some do not escape it: alternate histories are woven together until we are not really sure what is true. And this is the message. &ldquo;History is all about &lsquo;what ifs&rsquo;&rdquo; a character says late in the novel. More to the point here, perhaps, is that fiction, and this fiction in particular, is all about &lsquo;what ifs&rsquo;.
This is my first experience with what I would call a literary mash-up. Mash-up is a relatively new concept in literature that was borrowed from music where two or more songs are combined, usually by laying the vocal track of one song over the instrumental track of another. Wikipedia defines a literary mash up as taking a pre-existing work of fiction, often a classic, and combining perhaps thirty or forty percent of it with a vampire, werewolf, or horror genre. Atkinson has taken &ldquo;classic history,&rdquo; which is the F&uuml;hrer&rsquo;s horror story, and overlaid many possible stories (love stories, family histories, employment possibilities) so that outcomes in some cases are different for individuals, but not, that we can see, in the larger history.
Stories cascade upon one another, all centered around a single family, indeed, a single person, Ursula, who we meet in the first chapter and who succeeds, we think at first, in killing the F&uuml;hrer.
&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you wonder sometimes, &ldquo; Ursula said. &ldquo;If just one small thing had been changed, in the past, I mean. If Hitler had died at birth, or if someone had kidnapped him as a baby and brought him up in&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know, say a Quaker household&mdash;surely things would be different.&rdquo;
The juxtaposition of the chapters makes one remember those times when we stare into the unknowingness of the future and wonder what it will hold for us&hellip;and once there, looking back at the innocence of the early years, when we proceeded with our lives as though we had any control at all. Which brings me to a larger observation in this novel and in Atkinson&rsquo;s fiction in general: oftentimes Atkinson&rsquo;s characters are not agents of change, but reagents, possibly causing a chain reaction when they are introduced, possibly having no discernible impact at all.
&ldquo;Most people muddled through events and only in retrospect realized their significance. The F&uuml;hrer was different, he was consciously making history for the future.&rdquo;
Sometimes there are exceptional people, but even they cannot escape that possibility that &ldquo;one thing&rdquo; could change everything. Therein lie our power, and the power of the fiction writer.
The title, Life After Life, points to those lives impacted by another&rsquo;s life, or a close escape from death, or lives that continue after another has died, or simply the alternate histories we all might have if &ldquo;one thing had been different.&rdquo;
When the book and the stories were drawing to a close, I admit I didn&rsquo;t want to get to the end. I didn&rsquo;t want another person to die unexpectedly. I didn&rsquo;t want Ursula to grow older. I didn&rsquo;t want to know which story was true. So, you see, I was caught, too.

An_Arkansas_Reader

More than 1 year ago

I tend to be skeptical of books that have a big fuss made about them, finding them either too &ldquo;artsy&rdquo; or too &ldquo;James Patterson-ish&rdquo; -not literary at all. But Life After Life far exceeded my expectations. It was well-written with a great sense of atmosphere, a believable but likeable protagonist, and a great sense of time and place. The main character, Sophie, is born again and again throughout the novel on a chilly evening in February 1910. Each lifetime a circumstance changes sending Ursula and her family&rsquo;s future on a different trajectory. What if we get to live again and again until we get our life right? Highly recommended for fans of historical and literary fiction!

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Read this novel, please! I promise you that once you begin reading this book you too will find it difficult to put it down. And once you read it through to the last pages, I'm sure you too will want to turn back to its first pages to rethink the whole novel through again. To be sure, this is a masterpiece which deserves to be read again and again. Ursula is truly a remarkable character of depth whom we take interest in for her own sake as an individual and not for anything she might symbolize as a literary heroine. We are able to connect with her viscerally (and we do many times over). The other primary characters who populate her story are no less remarkable than she. Her family, her friends, her lovers, and even her Zen master-like psychiatrist are all highly believable individuals with whom we can easily identify. The cover blurb provides a fair plot summary of the novel and I am sure other reviewers will rehash it over and over again as well, so I will spare you a plot summary here. Rather I want to remark on what makes this novel so brilliant for me - and it is not only the deep underlying philosophical and religious themes which will surely open wide this book to many interpretations - but its beautiful characters who break all stereotypes and its structure which is a masterpiece of narrative architecture.

katsy315

More than 1 year ago

Don't give up on this book. It is very confusing for at least the first third. But it is captivating and you just become fascinated by the lives in it. I'm still not sure what it's all about but may reread it again soon to take it all in again. I don't know how Kate Atkinson thought of an idea for this book.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

This is by far one of the most entertaining and intriguing novels I have ever read. I will not try to describe it as it truly defies description. If I had to sum it up in a sentence I would say: A marvelous morality tale of what ifs and what could bes. Ursula, the main character, has a chronic case of deja vu. With it, she gets a do over when she needs it. This way, everyone gets a happy ending. A totally charming novel, I found it difficult to put down. &hellip;LEB&hellip;

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

I was very excited about the premise of this story. Unfotunately, it did not get fulfilled. I think the story was confusung at times and the end was very rushed. There was some bouts of brilliance but a lot of times the plots fell flat. Not sorry i bought it but I don't get what all the praise was about. Also there was a lot of German so some puns msy have been lost on me since I don't speak that language. Hope this helps your decision making!

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

I really enjoyed reading the book. I would say this book is for people who like something thought provoking. The writing is excellent and the concept is novel (at least to me). Much of the novel is on the melancholy side but there are many sections of inspiring triumph.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

When I finished reading this book, I was sure I had missed some details, so I started over and read it again. The second reading clarified some things for me, but the ending left me more confused than I was the first time. However, I thought it was an excellent book and well worth my time. I'm sure I will spend a lot of time thinking about it, and I may even read it again in the future.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Phew! Was I glad that book finally ended. It is one of the most tedious books I've ever read. Utterly exhausting. Barely got through it. Wish I would have stopped several pages in like some of these other readers.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Interesting and well written. Quite a clever plot device is more than well supported by wonderful storytelling. Read it!

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

This has to be the most boring book I have ever read. It sounded sort of interesting when I bought it, having been persuaded by all the good reviews. It has no particular suspense involved except that after the first few chapters you start waiting for Ursala to die. At page 88 I quit reading because I just didn't care anymore whether she lived or died. The author gave me no reason to identify with her or to care about her. She (nor any of the other characters) were ever real people to me. I am very sorry I bought this book.

timeshadowrider

More than 1 year ago

Loved it! A whole new take on Einstein's quantum universes.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Imagine plodding through a Christmas card from a distant relative or friend with a 2 page insert of all the mundane things that have been happening in the life of their family. Now imagine over 400 pages of this and the family is not even real &ndash; it&rsquo;s fictional. That&rsquo;s what this book reads like. The premise is great &ndash; the execution of it is another matter entirely. Each chapter is filled with mundane details of the routine activities of daily living of the protagonist and her family &ndash; kids playing in the yard, people eating, blah, blah, blah. You have to get to the last paragraph of each chapter before anything interesting happens, and that is the part where Ursula dies. It would have been nice if she could have spared us the agony and just stayed dead in the first paragraph of the book and end it there. As it is, you find yourself reading because of the interesting premise of the story, only to be continually frustrated as the Christmas card tabulation never seems to end. I have to confess, I value my time and was not going to get snookered into wasting anymore of it than I had to, so I gave up after 50 or so pages. But in my opinion, if the author can&rsquo;t say something interesting by this point, then he has failed the reader, and with so many books to be read out there, the reader should move on to the next one. I could have saved some time and money by paying more attention to some of the negative reviews. They were spot on. Unless you&rsquo;re a big fan of Christmas cards, save yourself the trouble and find another book. This one is a snoozer.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

It was not at all what I expected, but thoroughly enjoyed it once I got into it. An interesting journey and very thought provoking.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Loved this book! It was so interesting to see the complex view of the London bombings through the eyes of the main character. Highly recommend!

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Sometimes I thought I was reading the incorrect chapter. Interesting story but too contrived to enjoy the read.

SuseNJ

More than 1 year ago

Very long book mostly about the main character's family life and dealing with WWII. Will be a big disappointment if you expect a lot of the plot to be about Ursula's multiple lives.

WendySiera

More than 1 year ago

I thought this book was absolutely fabulous. And now that it's been about a week since I've read it, I find myself walking around with the constant sense that the past is everpresent with me; it's not over, it's just behind the thinnest veil. The connection and roads not taken are still here, impinging on every minute, and everything in life seems very tentative and interconnected--a miraculous and changeable weave. Kate Atkinson is a master storyteller. When I read her it's like watching Picasso draw a single line that turns immediately into a living creation. We know Kate Atkinson's Ursula Todd is entirely fictional, but in her provisionality, she is somehow more than that, much more alive and active in all her variation than all other characters we've read. A truly stunning achievement.

MollysMomFL

More than 1 year ago

I've always believed in reincarnation so this book looked exciting at first glance...I'm at page 163 and it's like a durge trying to get thru to something interesting. Maybe I'm missing something here...I don't find it complex, just simple and boring...author will probably throw in a rape pretty soon and maybe Ursula won't even know what happened...go figure!

AbbyGGH

More than 1 year ago

Brilliant!
Have you ever, even just once, wondered how your life and those around you would be different had you taken a different path at a decision point, even if it seemed mundane and irrelevant at the time? This book tells that story for one character (and the subsequent &quot;touch points&quot; to others in her life). The writing style is original and page-turning. I highly recommend this book.

CrazyForNewBooks

More than 1 year ago

I managed to get through the first 200 pages before I could no longer believe I was using my time well.
The story is so wordy but goes nowhere. There are dialogue pieces in German, French, and Spanish, none of which are translated, which I found to be annoying.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

I love to read but this was a hard read. I got confused thinking I'd missed pages and that wasnt the case. I'm not sure if I'm disappointed in the book or my reading skills, which by the way I have never had to question before. Ugh, I wish I liked it more.

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